As stated above, the first thing that comes to mind is putting doors along the actual outside walls of the building. Saves you space for the actual haunt without the need for emergency exit corridors along the perimeter.

Do you think steel doors w/ push-bars? Or do regular turn knobs work? Initially I was looking at exit corridors until I realized how much space we were losing.

Push bars will make the fire marshal happier, easier to open in an emergency "RUNNN!.....crap hold on gotta turn this..." Versus "RUNNNNN!!!" *push* "RUNNNN!!!"

And steel everything makes your life MUCH easier.

With fire retardant wall panels and a steel building, our town says we don't need a sprinkler. Not saying that you should count on it, but it definitely makes people happier. Just do everything geared towards making building and fire the happiest people ever and you'll have a great working relationship with them for a long time.

^ Agreed. Definitely push bars. But yeah, ain't it crazy how much sq footage you save by eliminating emergency corridors?! It's great! Lucky you to get to think about all this and design in theory the "perfect haunt location".

With strict fire codes in MD we had to give the illusion that you were indoors. For the most part it works great, with the exception that everything gets wet when it rains and we have to strike it completely every season. This year we started building skids - basically sheds w/o roofs to bolt together to make our high detailed rooms. They are stored locally in the off-season. This is a pic of the facade. I think the height of the building will force us to create an extended roof line. The building will be hidden by the facade. IMG_3427.JPG

Panic hardware is a must. But expensive. Your Marshall might be friendly enough to let you get away with unlatched hinged doors but I doubt it. My Marshall is a pussy who got his ass beat a lot in school and no is taking it out on everybody. Cost me $6,000 in doors this year!

At the end of last season Planning and zoning made us tear down both of our houses because it was against zoning code... so we built pre-fab rooms in our workshop on skids, much like a prefab shed. Most are 12x16 and crack in half to 12x8s. They are connected by 4x8 paneled hallways with a skid-like floor to create the old wooden floor feel. It worked out great. It took us 1 week to set up the structure of the haunt, and 2 days to tear it down and pack it away. The pic on the right shows the skids stored in a neighbor's barn. This winter we are going to work on building new rooms on skids, and hopefully have the entire haunt built like this by next season. Anyone else do anything like this?20131114_105445.jpg20131114_130315.jpg20131114_160907.jpg

That skid idea is cool. Could you put roofs on them to keep the sets dry, if they were under the code square footage... then space the rooms so they had to walk through a roofless corridor to get to the next room? I don't know, just curious.

I wish we could build permanent roofs on the buildings, then we wouldn't need the overall roof. We just simply couldn't provide the level of detail that we wanted in the house w/o building the skids. The rooms were tarped during the week, but they were off while we were open. We used chandeliers and downward focused overhead lighting to hide the fact they were in an open-air maze. We bought several of the LED Darklight Flicker controllers from fright props and they worked great with the LED strip lights we used. The best part about the skids is that they're all outfitted with pneumatics and led lighting - when we're ready to launch next year, they will be plug-and-play.

I like the idea to! How many square feet is that barn and how many rooms can you fit in it? I am thinking of switching to a out door haunt and this is one of the coolest ideas I have seen just worried about storage space. Thanx for sharing the pics awesome!